Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1386209
14 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 23 JUNE 2021 EUROPE MORE than 90 environmental and consumer groups have ap- pealed to the European Parlia- ment to postpone their judge- ment on sustainable finance rules that would allow logging and the burning of trees to be counted as green investments. In an open letter, organisa- tions including BirdLife Europe, WWF, Greenpeace, and the European Consumer Organisa- tion, BEUC, called on the 705 Members of the European Par- liament to suspend scrutiny of the EU Commission's "Taxono- my of sustainable investments" until the Renewable Energy Di- rective and the EU Forest Strat- egy are disclosed later this year. The EU Taxonomy is a tool to help investors, companies, issuers and project promot- ers navigate the transition to a low-carbon, resilient and re- source-efficient economy. The Taxonomy sets perfor- mance thresholds, called "tech- nical screening criteria," for economic activities which: • make a substantive contri- bution to one of six envi- ronmental objectives • do no significant harm to the other five, where rele- vant; • meet minimum safe- guards such as the OECD Guidelines on Multina- tional Enterprises and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The EU's Taxonomy Regula- tion, agreed at the political lev- el in December 2019, creates a legal basis for the EU Taxono- my. The regulation sets out the framework and environmental objectives for the Taxonomy, as well as new legal obligations for financial market participants, large companies, the EU itself and its 27 Member States. The Taxonomy Regulation came into force in July 2020, af- ter the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance, TEG, submitted its report in March 2020. The Delegated Act released in December presented details on how authorities and the market can comply with the regulation, by setting out which econom- ic activities and sectors can be classed as sustainable. It is now subject to approval by the Euro- pean Parliament and Council. The conservation groups ar- gued that the European Com- mission's Delegated Act "green- washes unsustainable logging and bioenergy by stating that forestry, logging trees, and bi- oenergy, burning trees and crops for energy, made a 'sig- nificant contribution to climate mitigation' and did 'no signifi- cant harm' to biodiversity," the groups argued. As many criteria in the EU Taxonomy are linked to exist- ing legislation on forestry and bioenergy, the organisations are urging MEPs to use upcoming reviews of these policies and laws to strengthen the laws' pro- visions, align them with climate science, and restore the Taxon- omy's scientific credibility. Writing for BirdLife, Honey Kohan said that the Delegated Act published by the European Commission contains "grave mistakes and is not fit for pur- pose." "BirdLife will continue to call on the European Parliament and the Council to reject the Delegated Act," writes Kohan, "so the Com- mission can correct these mis- takes and adopt an Act that only labels activities actually good for the environment as such." 90+ NGOs urge EU Parliament to rethink 'green' finance list This article is part of a content series called Ewropej. This is a multi-newsroom initiative part-funded by the European Parliament to bring the work of the EP closer to the citizens of Malta and keep them informed about matters that affect their daily lives. These articles reflect only the authors' view. The European Parliament is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.